Chris Peck

Recently my son finished 50th at the Spokane All-City Cross Country Meet. He was thrilled. His mom and dad were thrilled. We celebrated 50th place with hearty congratulations at the dinner table.

In August 1889, downtown Spokane burned to the ground. Very simply, the next two weeks are as important to the city's core as any time since that great fire. By the end of October, the Spokane City Council either will vote to become a partner in a redevelopment that will save downtown, or will vote to reduce the core to rubble once again.

Doug Sutherland has been to a place where the economic sun doesn't shine. We knew it as Tacoma. Sutherland was mayor there. In Spokane the other day, the former mayor recalled that 20 years ago his city could fit into every stand-up comedian's routine.

Screaming at the television frightens the neighbors. Yet I want to scream this political season.

On September 22, Bob Dent became the first person in Australia to die legally with the assistance of his doctor.

Don Walsdorf signed a pledge more than 40 years ago not to talk about his secret life as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. He is 70 now. Time grows short for telling the true story of America's aerial spy campaign against the Soviet Union in the dark, early days of the Cold War.

The dictionary defines a naysayer as somebody who opposes, refuses or denies as a matter of habit. In Spokane, naysayers might also be defined as big trouble. Their unchanging habit of voting no on everything local government or civic leaders put forward to cope with our region's challenges has raised the very real possibility that Spokane is on the verge of taking great leaps backward.

On Friday I went looking for that splashy tabloid with the story about Dick Morris and the call girl. Many of you beat me to the newsstand.

Are you a Republican? If you ever had the urge to run with the elephants this would be the year in Washington. The reason: the state GOP has all the exciting political stuff.

I grew up in a small town with no Costco or Wal-Mart. To this day, I have not set foot in either store, although my wife has a Costco card and my brother's family in Wyoming has the opportunity to shop at Wal-Mart. I want to speak about why I am not thrilled to see Wal-Mart maneuvering to open a store not far from Costco in north Spokane.

Ron Wells, developer of historic buildings and real estate, invited folks over to his newest project this week: Steam Plant Square. You know the place. The old Spokane central steam heating building downtown, with its twin 200-foot high smokestacks, is hard to miss as you drive through the city's core. It's still an old steam plant inside, complete with boilers, pipe, wire cages, painted over glass from World War II. Here is a prediction: By the year 2000 Steam Plant Square will be one of the coolest, neatest, must-stops in the city. "If Planet Hollywood wanted to sign a lease for it tomorrow, I'd do it," Wells said at a before-the-restoration open house. Somebody will sign. The old steam plant fits ideally into the profile of successful American cities of the future: Historic, interesting, fun.

Spokane, a 93 percent white city, formally resumed a discussion of racism and prejudice a few days ago. There is a way to do such things. A formal discussion most often requires formal people to gather at a formal place and draft a formal plan. That's what happened.

In Spokane, we drove Yugos. In New York, they were made into art, including this telephone Yugo. File Photo

Is news a dinosaur? Put another way, will the Darwinian forces of a fed-up public, 50 channels of all movies, and a new generation dazzled by their own home pages, simply squeeze out that species known as news? The disappearance of the news as we know it may seem implausible, or not much of a loss. It is both. And, by some measures, news already belongs on the endangered species list. On a business trip to Denver last week I channel-surfed cable TV. Content broke down this way: mostly movie channels, 12; mostly talk, music or advice, 10; mostly half-hour TV shows, 10; sports, 5; religion, 3; news and how to have buns of steel, 2 each.

Tom Pedersen spends much of his life digging in mud. He is neither a lawyer nor a politician. Rather, he is a distinguished professor of oceanography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His mud-slinging usually involves shoveling muck from oceans, rivers and lakes where he conducts research with college students. Recently, however, Doctor Pedersen has felt the sting of mud being tossed at his reputation. He has been called a hack, a hired gun, a stooge for the mining industry.

David Gosse turns 18 this week. A few days ago, he graduated from Cheney High School with a 3.99 grade point average. In less than 90 days, he will leave home for Northwestern University outside of Chicago. His world is changing fast. On a still, sunny afternoon between high school and college, David imagines his future as bright, yet tinged with the sense of loss over something good being left behind.

Why do sports matter? How can men stay inside on the most beautiful Sunday of spring and watch a game where 10 millionaires in shorts run up and down the court with a basketball?

Jews didn't think incumbent Prime Minister Shimon Peres would be a tough enough negotiator for peace, so they elected Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an analysis by the San Francisco-based consul general of Israel. In an interview with The Spokesman-Review editorial board Wednesday, Nimrod Barkan noted that Peres won only about 45 percent of the Jewish vote in Israel, compared with Netanyahu's 55 percent. "They voted their national security interests for prime minister," Barkan said.

The other night I was lying in bed with the light on reading about wilderness. The wilderness is a trendy place right now, hotter than ever before in American history. A century ago, the vision of wide open spaces with few signs of man raised an uneasiness in pioneers. Back then the wilderness experience, as the Bible often reminded frontier families, was barren, desolate, and definitely not a place to take the family.

Father Bernard Coughlin's speech of hope arrived the same week as a letter of hate. Each text poured from the heart, different hearts. The hand of Father Coughlin shaped a declaration that love can, and must, overcome that which divides us.

George Nethercutt's blue blazer, striped shirt and red power tie look good these days. Incumbency has begun to fit well on the shoulders of the Spokane adoption attorney who made political history in 1994 by defeating the first sitting Speaker of the House in more than 100 years.

Fight crime. Throw away your purse. This is the advice Sandy Richards gives women. "Carrying a purse makes you a target for crime," Richards explained a few days ago. "You might as well put a big bull's-eye on it." Two years ago Richards was vacationing in London when she looked down and saw a man's hand in her purse. "It was 10 a.m. and I was waiting for the tube. Women tend to think crime happens at 10 at night when you are all alone. Mostly, that's wrong," she said.

A sobering definition of trouble might begin with this: cancer at age 10. Chana Martinez knows such trouble. She knows the fear of having her white blood cells explode out of control until her lungs can no longer replenish oxygen, stopping her breath, leaving her gasping and in pain while other fifth-graders at St. Mary's School were learning to read, write and grow up. She has felt the chilling loneliness of lying in a hospital ward and listening as one child after another quietly is sent home with no hope. Her troubles could have killed her before the petals of life had even begun to unfold. Her troubles could have destroyed her family. Her troubles could have left Chana Martinez weak and fearful about who she is.

Let's see, what are the arguments again against vote-by-mail? Oh, yeah, vote-by-mail means more people actually cast a ballot. Eek! That could be bad. Vote-by-mail allows people to vote early when they have made up their minds, thereby missing all that last-minute TV mudslinging. Uh-oh, trouble.